Thematic Network in Spatial Cognition:

Background

The Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (SILC) has worked hard to build connections across the many disciplines concerned with spatial cognition, as part of its strategic goal of establishing the science of spatial learning. These efforts include establishing and maintaining the Spatial Network, which allows for exchange of information and resources, through weekly updates on meetings, publications and job and funding opportunities, and by providing web resources for the field of spatial cognition, including a growing bibliography and downloadable assessments.

Internationally, SILC has cultivated a partnership with the Transregional Collaborative Research Center Spatial Cognition - Reasoning, Action, Interaction (SFB/TR8), a German center funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), and headquartered at the University of Bremen. The SFB/TR8 is complementary in many ways to SILC. It concentrates on navigation and robotics from a highly computational point of view and with an emphasis on perception-action relations. SILC focuses on a broad set of skills including spatial transformations, spatial language, and spatial analogies and emphasizes developmental and educational issues in spatial cognition. Each center has a website that gives further information on its goals, organization, projects, events and members; see http://www.spatiallearning.org/ and http://www.sfbtr8.uni-bremen.de/.

Together, SILC and the SFB/TR8 have co-sponsored or will co-sponsor:

three workshops (at the University of Freiburg in 2008, and at the Germany embassy to the United Nations in 2009 and 2011);

three meetings of the biennial Spatial Cognition Conference (2008 in Germany , 2010 in the United States and 2012 in Germany);

a workshop on design cognition at the University of Bremen in July 2012; and

future Spatial Cognition Conferences planned for 2014 in Germany and 2016 in the United States.